Remember the smart microwave that Amazon announced last year? That’s the number one selling microwave on Amazon. Of course, that’s a fact you kind of have to take with a few grains of salt because, one, Amazon told us that fact at today’s keynote and, two, Amazon is probably pushing its own microwave ahead of other products. It has skin in the game, after all.
Either way, the Amazon smart microwave is probably more popular than most people expected – maybe even including Amazon – and today, the company another smart home appliance that will likely be really popular on Amazon, too; and to be fair, it looks like it could be pretty neat for stay-at-home cooks.
I’m referring to the Amazon Smart Oven, of course. It’s multi-talented home appliance, able to function as a convection cooker, air fryer and a microwave. And because it has built-in Alexa, Amazon is promising more skills. In addition to asking Alexa to microwave something for a specific amount of time, or just set a timer, you can use Alexa to command the Alexa Smart Oven to do things like preheat the oven to specific temperatures.
The other neat thing there’s a new feature called “scan to cook,” which allows the Alexa Smart Oven to scan a compatible packaged food item from Whole Foods (remember, Amazon acquired the grocery store in 2017); it’ll then set its own temperature and the cooking time, eliminating all the “hard work” for you.
As much as smart microwave and a smart oven sort of sounds ridiculous, Amazon’s latest kitchen appliance might be more practical than you expect. It fits the trend where many kitchenware brands are going – countertop ovens are very popular right now. And very few (if any?) have voice control capabilities out of the box. Also, the Amazon Smart Oven is priced very competitively.
One other thing to factor is that the Alexa Smart Oven isn’t actually an Alexa device – it doesn’t have any built-in mics or speakers – and thus depends on you to connect an Echo Dot speaker to it. Amazon will, however, ship an Echo Dot speaker with every Alexa Smart Oven, so it’s technically not an extra purchase.
The Amazon Smart Oven is available for pre-order right now for $250. It is expected to ship in mid-November.
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